


They Never Believed We'd Really Fall in Love

by ellacj



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Nonbinary LaFontaine, Other, Songfic, fluff followed by tragedy, i think i'm just incapable of writing fluff without making it tragic, i'm sorry everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3099518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Take me home, where we met so many years before."</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Never Believed We'd Really Fall in Love

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Mary's Song" by Taylor Swift. But a lot more tragic than the song. Sorry, guys, I'm just terrible.

Lola met Susan when she was six years old.

Their parents were friends, and they lived right next door to each other, so it was only natural that the two of them became best friends. They played in the little treehouse in Lola’s backyard, their parents sitting in lawn chairs and laughing about grown-up things to which neither of them paid any mind. “Can we play monsters?” she asks as they climb up the ladder to sit on the floor of the little wooden house.

“No way, you always make boring rules when we play that,” Susan says indignantly. “Let’s play truth or dare.”

“What’s that?”

“My big sister plays it sometimes with her friends. It’s where you have to tell the truth to a ‘uestion or do a dare.”

Lola nods. “Okay. You go first.”

“I pick dare.”

“Okay…” After thinking a moment, Lola grins. “I dare you to kiss me.” She crosses her arms triumphantly, believing she’s won, but then Susan starts leaning forward with her lips puckered. Lola squeals. She scrambles to her feet, running to the opposite corner of the treehouse. “I didn’t mean for real!”

Susan laughs. “I like you. You’re funny.”

“I like you too,” Lola replies with a slight grin.

“Let’s promise to be best friends forever.”

“Forever.”

 

When Lola’s sixteen, she tells her parents she’s gay.

“We know,” they tell her.

And that she’s dating Susan.

“We know,” they tell her.

Lola grins and hugs her parents, and all of them just stand there like that for a minute, a big bundle of love and joy. When she calls Susan later that night to tell her the good news, Susan’s crying. She stays with Lola for a week until her parents cool down.

 

When Lola’s seventeen, she has her first fight with Susan.

There on her front lawn, both of them screaming things in the middle of the night that neither of them really mean. And then Lola rips off the necklace Susan gave her a month ago and throws it on the ground, storming into her house and slamming the front door behind her.

When she looks out her bedroom window the next day Susan’s pickup truck is still pared in her driveway and she can vaguely see a figure curled up in the back. She smiles to herself, throwing on a sweatshirt and running downstairs. “Susan,” she says softly.

“Wha?” Susan says as she wakes up, lifting her head and blinking at the sunlight.

“I love you.” Lola reaches forward and cups Susan’s face in her hands, kissing her like she never has before. “I love you.”

 

When Lola’s eighteen, Susan isn’t Susan anymore.

“I just… I’d like to be called LaFontaine now,” she says, feet tracing uncomfortably in the dirt.

“How come?”

LaFontaine opens her mouth to answer, but seems to change her mind and shakes her head. “I don’t want to be Susan anymore. She’s not me.”

Lola smiles, and takes LaFontaine into her arms. “It’ll take a while for me to get used to, you know.”

“Is it gonna be weird for you? Calling me by my last name?”

“Maybe for a little bit. But I’ll get used to it. But do you know what?” Grinning, Lola grabs LaFontaine’s hand and squeezes it. “You can call me Perry from now on.”

 

When Perry’s twenty, LaFontaine finally tells her why she insists on going by her last name.

“It’s not that I want to be a guy, it’s just… I don’t really want to be a girl either.”

“What do you want to be?”

LaFontaine shrugs. “I don’t know. Yours.”

 

When Perry’s twenty-two, she gets engaged to the most beautiful person she’s ever met. LaFontaine’s parents, having come around by now, are just as thrilled as Perry’s, and both families insist on helping plan the wedding.

LaFontaine holds Perry’s hand and smiles as they squeeze it. “I love you, you know.”

Perry grins, leaning closer to kiss LaFontaine on the cheek. “I love you too, you crazy stupid idiot.”

All their friends come to the wedding, Laura and Carmilla and Danny and Kirsch all grinning from the front row. And by the end of the night, Laura and Carmilla leave the church hand in hand, and there’s a ring on Laura’s finger that Perry is quite sure wasn’t there a few hours ago. She smiles, kissing her beautiful partner in the pristine white tuxedo. “I am so happy right now,” she tells them. “I love you.”

Perry’s parents present them with the keys to their house, along with the information that they’ve bought an apartment in the city. Her mother kisses them both on the cheek and hugs them tight. “I always knew this was coming,” she murmurs.

 

They don’t have kids. LaFontaine insists they would grow sick of the child in less than a year, and Perry starts hyperventilating just _thinking_ about the mess a child would bring. But Laura and Carmilla bring Lucy and Mina (less cliché names could never be thought up, and it never fails to make Perry laugh) over all the time, and the twins worm their way into Perry and LaFontaine’s hearts quicker than parasites, as LaFontaine so eloquently puts it.

And when Danny and Kirsch finally admit their puppy love for each other and settle down, Perry absolutely falls in love with their little Peter.

No, Perry and LaFontaine don’t have kids of their own, but they’re overjoyed spending time with their big happy, family just as it is.

 

Time wears on, and everyone except Carmilla gets older and older. Laura and Carmilla move back to Styria in their retirement, and Danny and Kirsch follow Peter to California when his acting career kicks off. But LaFontaine and Perry never move out of their little old house, raising their cats and watching the world change around them. LaFontaine retains their love for science even into old age, and works diligently on any problem put in front of them.

They practically live in their lab when Perry gets sick.

“Sweetheart, you can’t cure cancer,” Perry says gently, wrapping her arms around them and resting her head on their shoulder. The two of them are looking more alike with every passing year, and their gray hairs become indistinguishable as Perry leans closer. “Just come back and be with me. Let me live with you while I still can.”

“Don’t talk like that,” LaFontaine says. They sniff slightly, shoulders stiff. “You’re gonna get better. You have to.”

“I’ll try my best.”

 

Perry’s diagnosed terminal a year later, given a timestamp, a ticking clock imprinted into her brain that tells her just when she’s going to breathe her last breath. A deadline, so to speak.

“Three months?” LaFontaine exclaims, rising to their feet in outrage. “No way, it _has_ to be longer than that! She can’t just-” They break off with a sob and sink into the plastic chair with their head in their hands. “We’ve got so much left to do.”

Perry gently strokes her partner’s arm, biting her lip to stop her own tears. “We’ve got three months, love. Let’s do it all.”

 

Three months, two weeks, and four days later, Perry’s smiling up at LaFontaine from a hospital bed with her hand clutching LaFontaine’s as hard as she can – which isn’t very hard.

LaFontaine reaches forward and gently tugs at the cloth framing Perry’s face, covering the stark baldness on a head that used to have the most beautiful red ringlets anyone had ever seen. “I love you, you know.”

Perry smiles weakly. “We’ve been married for over fifty years. Of course you love me.” She laughs, but it quickly dissolves into a fit of coughing that lasts several minutes. When finally she stops, she looks straight into LaFontaine’s eyes with a much more sober expression. “I love you too.”

Her heart monitor projects a flat line later that night, and LaFontaine cries over her body with a tight grip on a limp hand. And all they can think is that the next gathering of their whole big family won’t be for a wedding, like last time. Because this week they’ll be busy writing out funeral invitations.


End file.
